This portion of New Year Letter seems apropos:
To say two different things at once,
To wage offensives on two fronts,
And yet to show complete conviction,
Requires the purpler kinds of diction
And none appreciate as he
Polysyllabic oratory.
All vague idealistic art
That coddles the uneasy heart
Is up his alley, and his pigeon
The woozier species of religion,
Even a novel, play or song,
If loud, lugubrious and long;
He knows the bored will not unmask him
But that he's lost if someone ask him
To come the hell off in the links
And say exactly what he thinks.
--Auden (1940)
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